


Aftermath

by athena_crikey



Category: Eyeshield 21
Genre: Gen, I mean if anyone can really comfort Hiruma..., Moral Quandries, Post-Dinosaurs, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 08:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14132574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: Mamori tries to come to terms with the choices made and allowed in the game.





	Aftermath

Mamori is ready for the wave of euphoria, so she keeps her head as it washes over her. The same isn’t true for the rest of the team. All of Deimon’s wins are unlooked for, but few have been so unhoped for. This is the closest they’ve ever come to giving up since their first game against Oujyou, the closest they’ve ever come to an absolutely impossible victory. She still can’t believe they were able to come back without a quarterback – has never heard of anything like it. But Deimon’s the most unconventional team in the league, and the word impossible isn’t in their dictionary. 

Mamori watches from the sidelines as the end of game fireworks go off, and are drowned out by the screaming of her team. They’ve wanted other victories more, but they’ve never needed to defeat a team so much. Never needed to revenge so very personal a wrong – one that they never would have even conceived of before today. She thinks, watching them dance and scream, that they never had occasion to realise just how much of the team Hiruma is. Like children who suddenly find themselves without their parents for the first time, that loss was deeply shaking. And, still like children, it’s mostly forgotten as soon as he reappears on the field.

But Mamori isn’t a child, and she hasn’t forgotten. Now, while Kurita flings Komusubi up in the air and Sena and Monta perform some sort of bizarre congo with Yukimitsu and Ishimaru and the three brothers crow to each other, she watches Hiruma. Watches the amazed wide-eyed awe in his face and the way his arms are trembling, and knows he needs to be off the field, now.

In the storm of noise, smoke and confetti, most of the team don’t notice her crossing the field. Musashi gives her a glance, eyes flashing to Hiruma and back again, and nods before going over to lift Komusubi down from the upright’s crossbar. 

Hiruma doesn’t notice her come over. She knows because he startles when she appears suddenly beside him. He covers it well, but his pupils don’t lie. It’s the first time she’s ever seen him surprised by his surroundings – people, yes, but he has sharper senses than anyone she knows. 

“You need to lie down,” she says, shouting somewhat to overcome the background roar. 

He blinks once – she prepares to launch into her carefully-arranged arguments – and then gives a curt nod while she stares in shock.

Hiruma walks off the field from the game that he saved even with a broken arm, and no one but her and Musashi notice him go. The manager in her knows that’s how it should be, knows Hiruma doesn’t want the attention and that the team deserves their victory. The tiny part of her that sees Hiruma as a man rather than a quarterback, is bitterly angry on his behalf. But then it’s also bitterly angry at Hiruma for making such a stupid reckless choice, and bitterly angry at herself for allowing it, so really it’s hard to make any kind of sense of what she actually feels. She hurries off the field after him, clutching her clipboard tight to keep herself from reaching out to him.

The tiny first aid room is cold, surrounded by metres of solid concrete and currently unheated. Hiruma walks in with a stiff, scarecrow gait, trembling slightly when he unlocks his joints. Mamori does reach out now, puts a hand on his good one to help him keep his balance as he comes to a stop in front of the bed. He looks down at it in a long, inexorable motion like the swing of a weightless pendulum. And then he sits down so abruptly she loses her grip, and has to move to catch him before he can hit his head on the bed as he slumps backwards with his eyes closed. 

“Hiruma-kun?”

“Don’t squawk, fucking manager. Broke my damn arm, not my ears.” He lifts his legs up one at a time, slow and shaking, and sighs. She puts her hand on his forehead, finds it moist and warm.

“You have a fever,” she says, as she hurries over to the sink to wet a cloth. The water sputters noisily from the faucet to dampen the dust in the sink.

“Surprise, surprise,” drawls Hiruma. She returns and puts it over his forehead; there’s no need to drape it over his eyes now, no fear of tears – pained or otherwise. She picks up the sheet he threw off when he left and pulls it over him again, not that it will be much protection against the cold here.

“You need to go to the hospital.”

“It’s not fatal.” He speaks without opening his eyes, head turned towards the ceiling.

Mamori purses his lips. “No, but it must be painful. And you exacerbated it by throwing that pass.” She tries to keep the nagging from her voice, doesn’t succeed.

Hiruma makes an awkward, jerking movement – an arrested shrug. “With the crowds out there no way we’ll get out for another 20 minutes.” 

“By the time we get you to a car they’ll have thinned out. You could have injured a major blood vessel, or caused serious muscle damage, or –”

“Enough, fucking manager, I know the goddamn risks. I’m in your fucking bio class, aren’t I?”

“It was a stupid thing to do – I never should have let you –”

“Do I look like the fucking shrimp to you?” 

“You look like a member of the team to me – the team I’m the manager of! Would you let one of them do something this stupid?” She points to the door behind her without pausing, words pouring out of her like water from a breached dam, sudden and unstopable. “Would you let them do something you know would hurt them? I’m not talking about the Death March, or the Devil Bat Dive. I’m talking about something with a 100% chance of injuring them critically. You know you wouldn’t. Well, I did.” She has to fight to pull air in through her suddenly-tight throat, feels the choking burn there. “Damn you, Hiruma, I did. And I don’t know if it’s worse to think that you made me, or that I let you.” She turns away sharply, eyes stinging, and crosses her arms tightly over her chest. 

“Almost two thirds of professional football players are severely injured in their careers – and nearly half retire because of an injury," says Hiruma, matter-of-factly. And then, more harshly, "It’s not unusual; it’s part of the game, and you know it.”

“Not when it happens to you – t-to this team,” she corrects, stuttering. 

“With those fucking idiots, it’s amazing it hasn’t happened before now. We had a whole slew of broken bones last year.”

“And none of them were returning to the field to play with their broken bones!” she returns, railing and finding the thread of her argument. “How can it be worth it? What if there’s permanent damage? What if you can’t play again? What if you can hardly even use your arm again? When you’re thirty, or fifty, will you look back on it and think this one game was worth that?”

“Yeah.” He answers without pause or hesitation, and she swivels around again, eyes blazing.

“How the hell can you know that? How can you just say that, like it’s nothing, like it –”

“Anezaki.” Hiruma turns towards her and opens his eyes; they’re bright green and sharp as glass. The use of her name is enough to stop her dead, but his fever-focused eyes drive all the thoughts from her mind. “I know.” The certainty in his voice is solid enough to crush mountains, so absolute that it sends shivers down her spine. 

For several instants, she can do nothing but count her heartbeats as they pound in her head, by far the loudest sound in the silent room. Finally, she shakes her head. “You’re an idiot, Hiruma Youichi” she whispers, the words hardly disturbing the quiet. There’s no heat in her voice. Mamori doesn’t really understand commitment to football, but she knows devotion and loyalty when she sees them. 

Seeing them now, she knows she wasn’t the only one who really understood how much Hiruma has given to the team after all. That in a lot of ways, every single other member of the team knew it better than she did. 

“Just this once, I’ll let it go,” he tells her, closing his eyes again and turning back to the ceiling. “Now go get that fucking drunk and find a car.”

Mamori shakes her head, wipes away her tears, and slips out to find Doburoku-sensei.


End file.
